ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1613787
A sex dependent association between the history of autoimmune disease and the development of pancreatic cancer: a case-control study of 32,640 patients
Provisionally accepted
- 1Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
- 2Epidemiology, QuintilesIMS, Frankfurt, Germany
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Pancreatic cancer is a highly lethal cancer with increasing incidence and poor prognosis due to late diagnosis. While several risk factors are known, evidence on a potential role of autoimmune diseases remains limited. Given the increasing prevalence of autoimmune diseases and their association with various malignancies, this study aims to investigate their potential association with pancreatic cancer.: 5,440 patients with a first diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and 27,200 propensity score matched individuals without cancer were identified from the Disease Analyzer database (IQVIA). The outcome of the study was the association between the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and a patient´s history of autoimmune disease.Results: Inflammatory bowel disease (OR: 1.69; 95% CI: 1.34-2.12) and rheumatoid arthritis (OR:1.20; 95% CI: 1.03-1.41) were significantly associated with increased odds of pancreatic cancer. The OR was 1.25 for systemic lupus erythematosus and 1.26 for multiple sclerosis without reaching a statistical significance. In sex-stratified analyses, inflammatory bowel disease was strongly associated with pancreatic cancer in women (OR: 2.14; 95% CI: 1.59-2.89) but not in men (OR: 1.24; 95% CI: 0.86-1.78). A positive association between rheumatoid arthritis and pancreatic cancer was also observed in women (OR: 1.26; 95% CI: 1.03-1.53) but not in men (OR: 1.09; 95% CI: 1.03-1.53-1.44).In addition, the ORs for SLE (1.82) and MS (1.45) were increased in women to a clinically relevant extent that did not reach the significance level of <0.05. A similar increase was not observed in male patients.Autoimmune disease may be associated with an increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer, particularly in women. This highlights the importance of addressing gender differences in medical practice, particularly in relation to disease screening and surveillance.
Keywords: Pancreatic Cancer, PDAC, risk factor, autoimmune disease, inflammatory bowel disease, Rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Multiple Sclerosis
Received: 17 Apr 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Loosen, Hansen, Luedde, Roderburg and Kostev. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sven Loosen, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Frederik J. Hansen, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.